Fandom Old. Beautifully Unwell. One foot on Earth, one foot on Deep Space Nine. Just trying to survive the end of the world. Find me on Bluesky @lavellan.bsky.social Wolf on AO3 https://exiledfae.dreamwidth.org/
I expect I will lock all of these eventually. If you are in the middle of reading any of them and don't have an account, I have 8 invites, feel free to hit my ask or inbox. The more I think about my work (even my silly little fanfics) being used to feed the A.I. beast, the more I get squicked. I don't want to gatekeep any people, just the beast.
My main pairing is Buck/Tommy, assume it's so in all the following unless specifically stated.
9-1-1/Highlander:
Practically Everything: Buck learns Tommy is one of those immortals. Diverges from canon after the coffee date in 7.05.
Lightning Strikes Twice: the sequel. Takes place 12 years in the future. Guest stars characters from The Old Guard (movie) and TK and Carlos from 9-1-1: Lone Star.
9-1-1/Dispatcher Tommy Kinard AU:
Let's Try Being In Love: AU starting with the pilot episode, where Tommy is a dispatcher after a work injury and he takes the home invasion call and Buck meets him instead of Abby.
Step Into The Light: AU season 2 following Buck and dispatcher Tommy's relationship. Includes an alternate version of the Doug arc.
This Delicate Thing We've Made: part 3. Takes place during the second half of season 2. Tommy feels inadequate and it's putting a strain on his relationship with Buck. He goes to therapy.
9-1-1/Deep Space 9:
Far Beyond the Stars: Kinaar Tahmane is a former Bajoran refugee who's joined Starfleet. After a shuttle accident renders a pregnant passenger unconscious and in critical condition, Doctor Bashir transfers the fetus to the next available uterus: Tommy's. Did I mention he's trans in this? Then he meets the father, Lieutenant Evan Buckley.
Prophet Margin: Tommy and Buck get roped into political intrigue at the hands of Vedek Winn, as they try to navigate Tommy's surrogacy of Buck's kid.
Besieged: A xenophobic Bajoran sect stages a coup of the Bajoran government and the crew (including our boys) has to defend the station from a siege.
Night Terrors: With his ex-girlfriend back on Deep Space 9, Buck struggles with his concepts of family, and Tommy struggles with his place in Buck's life. Mysterious power outages plague the station.
Tommy, Pondering His Orb: Tommy, feeling a certain way about his estrangement from religion, visits a Bajoran monastery and once again gets caught in Vedek Winn's web.
Fathers and Sons: It's the Bajoran Gratitude Festival on DS9. There is much to be grateful for, and much to be annoyed by.
The Maquis, Part 3: Tommy and Buck undertake a dangerous mission on behalf of Captain Bobby Nash. Takes place a few months after DS9 episode 2.21 "The Maquis, part 2" but I summarize what you need to know in the first chapter.
Buck Begins Again: Thrown back in time to 2019 Los Angeles, Buck makes some new friends and tries to figure out a way back home. Tommy and Karen try to find a way to bring him back.
Counterbalance: Settled back at home on Deep Space Nine, Buck and Tommy think about what's next. While Tommy tries to plan a surprise for Buck's birthday, Buck's thinking along different lines... A chill, low-stakes DS911 episode.
Fools and Mortals: It's once again time for the Bajoran Gratitude Festival, and Kinaar Liara Buckley's first birthday. Of course it doesn't go as expected. But once the madness dies down, Buck and Tommy plan for their future. [Crack-fic of a crack-episode. You know the one.]
Destiny: An ancient Bajoran prophecy of doom complicates the first joint Bajoran, Cardassian, and Federation science mission. Keela's ongoing research into the mycelial realm ruins Tommy's entire weekend.
9-1-1:
Not Like That: The crack mpreg fic that started a new era of madness. Not trans, not carrier-verse, but a secret third thing.
His Valiant Heart: AU where they work at the Renaissance Faire. Prompted by @peppermintquartz
Almost Unreal: Tommy Kinard is a witch under the Roman Empire's Stregheria. Evan Buckley is an emergency responder in the Norse colony of Vinland in the new world. You wouldn't expect their paths to cross, except for a dream Buck had after being marked by Thor. For LadyEyre as part of the 2025 Bucktommy Gift Exchange.
9-1-1 shorts:
Flags: Buck's first Pride Fest after coming out.
It's Not What You Think (SWAT crossover): Post-breakup, Buck finds a distraction. Eddie makes the wrong assumption.
Crab Boats: Supermarket woes.
9-1-1/SWAT:
Hero Worship: Connor follows Buck's footsteps and joins the LAFD. While firefighters are being targetted by a sniper, he meets a certain SWAT Sergeant named Rocker. Then he sees him at a bar with Buck and everything changes.
SWAT:
Whatever This Is: Aftermath of season 8's 'Deep Cover' episode, where Miguel considers his feelings for Stefan, with some help from Rocker.
Miguel: text messages between Miguel and Stefan while Stefan is in rehab.
So much would be written about that grim night in New Orleans,
but not a single mention of our last night at Latrobe's,
as if the only crime unfit to print took place on that dance floor.
"My mum won't let me" Okay I am 30 goddamn years old and I still have this thought so let's walk through it together.
What's the worst that can happen if you do it anyway? Genuinely. The literal worst. Catastrophise about it with me for a sec.
Will your mum yell at you? You're an adult. Yelling at fellow adults is Not Okay Actually. (Yelling at kids is also not okay but let's take this one step at a time.) If your mum is yelling at you, a fellow adult, she's the one being weird and out of line. You asked your friend and they said so too (me. I'm the friend.)
Will she cut off your phone plan? That would be a problem. Can you look into whether you can afford to switch to a new plan she doesn't have access to? Most phone companies will let you port your number over pretty easily.
Will she cut you off financially? Run the numbers again. Can you afford for that to happen? If the answer is no, that's okay, I believe you and I know you're making the best decision for your own well-being that you can in the moment. If there's anything you can do to make it more affordable, I do suggest doing that, though.
Will she be physically violent, inclusive of breaking stuff that belongs to you? That’s assault. That's a crime. It's not okay for her to do that and she almost certainly knows it.
Will she stop talking to you? Honestly I gotta say at this point that's not sounding like a bad outcome. It sucks. It really really sucks and I'm sorry if that's a choice you're having to make, but take it from someone who's been there and done that: when someone who is being abusive to you (stalking is abuse! Yelling at you is abuse! Threatening to cut off your funds if you don't do what they want forever is abuse! Breaking your stuff or physically hurting you is abuse!) decides of their own volition to cut you off, it hurts for a hot minute, and then you suddenly realise that you can breathe, and it feels so. Goddamn. Amazing.
Delete the tracking application. Live where you want to live. Change your name. Join or leave the religion. Get the piercing or the tattoo or the surgery. Live your life, because it's yours and not your parents'.
For purely bullshit reasons (they put it on fucking Netflix which I won't touch with a ten foot pole) I haven't watched most of Star Trek Prodigy. I think at one point it may have been on CBS All Access before it moved to Netflix? Something like that.
The other bullshit reason was that I have historically low patience for kids shows where the kid is given an adult responsibility and repeatedly and to the detriment of everyone refuses to listen to reason and just does the worst possible thing every time. (I get why they do it that way, I know that I'm not the target audience for this.) I made it through a couple of episodes before I wanted to put that kid Del, Dal, whatever, through the fucking bulkhead. (I'm not a parent, don't come at me.)
Anyway, finally I said, I want some weird aliens to put in my fic. I can make some up myself or I can watch this animated kids' show. And so I came aboard the USS Piratebay armed with my trusty VPN and well, we'll see how long I make it this time.
When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.
The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?
This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.
one time me and some pals spotted one of those big cookie cakes in a store. it was done up with red icing and little X's for kisses and in the middle it said
No One Like You
now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"
for ages after when we'd wind each other up we'd declare "NO ONE LIKE YOU ☹️👎"
i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights
If you think about it, all these thinkpieces about how Millenials are “killing” various industries reveal a pretty colossal sense of entitlement.
Under normal circumstances, if a given industry finds itself unable to sell products to a given market demographic, we’d say it’s that industry’s fault for failing to offer products that that demographic is interested in buying.
It only makes sense to blame the target demographic itself is if we’re assuming that the established industries have some intrinsic right to that demographic’s disposable income that’s being denied - which is clearly nonsense.
And I thought Millennials were supposed to be the entitled ones?
Thank you for putting into words one of the factors that has rubbed me the wrong way about the litany of articles and quotes about how Millennials are Ruining Everything ™.
Like, I have worked very hard to put out real, genuine quality stuff. The best that I can make while offering it at a reasonable price, because a business transaction should be fair; you get a good product, the business makes some profit, everyone walks away happy. I am not even that old, and I have already seen a significant decline in the quality, craftsmanship, materials and labor sources in almost all of my purchases compares to the items that my family bought when I was growing up- and I’m talking the expensive stuff, too! We have bought two Dysons from Costco in the last two years (returned both, thank god for Costco’s return policy!) and neither one functioned as well as Megan’s old parent’s Dyson that was made in the 80′s. My grandmother has an old metal sewing machine that has been kicking longer than I have but I’ve been through about four sewing machines in my lifetime, each one managed to last twoish years. And these are the things off the top of my head, and it goes all the way down. Like how they started manufacturing secretly-smaller containers for things with the bubble on the bottom so you don’t notice there’s less product inside, or how Charmin made their rolls ‘shorter’ than they used to be but they are still technically the same number of ‘sheets’- I mean, I know I sound a little crazy, but if you’re Charmin and you reduce the amount of paper material per-roll by even a single penny, even a fraction of a penny, it would add up to much bigger profits; and a bigger expense passed on to the consumer, who won’t notice that the rolls are an inch shorter (except me because I’m weird that way)
I see companies constantly finding ways to cut corners, pay employees less, and put out crappier merchandise, and then go “Why won’t anyone buy this stuff?!” and I just don’t get why they’re confused.
I’m resurrecting an ancient post, because nothing here has changed in the intervening time. The recent post about “tech hoarding” because people aren’t buying new phones on a regular schedule reminded me.
The companies definitely now feel entitled to profit and business, rather than earning it.
I would like to emphasize that I agree with all of these tags by the way. My post wasn't aiming to pin all of Europe's grotesque racism on the new elections.
A few weeks ago I was at a board game night with some of my old classmates from various mainland European countries. They started talking about how horrible Trump's treatment of immigrants is and how they're so glad to be in Europe where nothing like that is happening right now. I asked them what they thought about the fact that their own governments were complicit in turning the Mediterranean into a mass grave of asylum seekers, and some of them legitimately didn't even know and were surprised to hear that their own governments had enacted policies that caused the deaths of thousands of asylum seekers.
Even here in Iceland, almost nobody has been talking about the fact that some of the far right populist parties have legitimately been talking about wanting to establish detainment camps to keep asylum seekers in.
This post is a few months old now, and the bit about Iceland is now outdated, because Alþingi (the Icelandic parliament) passed the bill approving the detention center for asylum seekers. It will be legal to handcuff and detain children there.
Never let anyone from Europe feed you the lie that racism and fascism are unique to North America in the 21st century.
do fic readers know that their comments actually influence the course of the story sometimes? i don't mean in a "you need to write it this way because i say so 😡" type of comment, i mean when people are asking questions or really engaging with the plot and the themes in the comments they sometimes bring up things that i didn't even think of, or dig into parts of the story that i've overlooked, or get really interested/fixated on something i was going to just kind of glance over--and it has me going 'oh wait that's actually really interesting, that's a good point' and fully adding or tweaking or changing things about the story going forward. i'm literally adding an entire additional chapter to something right now because someone's comment had me like "oh i didn't dig into that as much as i could have." you have impact!
oh my god the slot machine company says i have to keep putting coins in their machine or Im Gonna Get Left Behind. thats so scary. and it has to be true because they know more about slot machines than i do
oh my god the slot machine company says if we dont give them money to build the world's biggest slot machine the chinese are gonna build it first and win all the prizes. and then there wont be any prizes anymore
"if being hard on yourself was going to work it would have worked by now" okay well being soft on myself isn't working either so what the fuck is left. medium? I gotta be medium with myself? I gotta ask the fucking ghosts for help? is that it?
Adding my 2cents as a trad published author, self-published author AND fanfiction writer.
This post is 100% on the money.
My trad work sometimes feels like I'm a line cook at a fast-food restaurant - I have actually used this metaphor before. Don't get me wrong, it is a privilege and a dream to be published, but it is also a job, and your boss is the publisher, so you write to a certain extent, what they want. And what they want is generally more of what already sells. I'm on my 10th book overall and have only managed to get one queer main character into my work, as a queer author. Because I am too niche, or that idea is too different, or what-have-you. The pay is good compared to my former entry level office jobs, and that's great, but it also requires more of me, and I'm churning out 'product' to make a living at the rate of 3-4 books a year.
Self-publishing is better but you're basically running a small independent restaurant where you do still have to care about the market and the quality of your product (and it is still very much a product) and you get criticism and at the end of the day the mark of 'success' is becoming a franchise and turning into the same mass-produced stuff as trad work. The pay is pretty bad and you now how overheads but, still, it's a little more fulfilling.
Fanfiction is like a birthday cake you make for a friend. It's accepted with joy no matter how wonky it is or how weird and niche the concept. You can make a liquorice and red-bean flavoured cake in the shape of spongebob as rasputin purely for the love of the game. And it's never going to be a viral recipe or a huge success or the next big thing, but it is EXACTLY how you wanted to make it, and that is why I am writing tens of thousands of words of fanfiction even though writing is my job - because it fulfils a creative need that a creative JOB doesn't necessarily provide me with. For FREE because the 'payment' is my own enjoyment and some comments that let me know I made someone happy.
